It’s Storm Season – Prepare Your Equipment

As a storm rolls by our office, I hear the thunder strike. The speakers on my desktop snap and pop with every bolt. Lights dim and flicker. It’s that time again — Storm Season.

Lightning is an extremely powerful, destructive force of nature. If you enjoy your (working) electronics, a Battery Backup is the best protection for them. Understand that computers and electronics are precision devices, running on very low voltage. Now consider that a bolt of lightning can contain up to ONE BILLION VOLTS (Thats 1,000,000,000 Volts — compared to the 5 – 12 Volts most of your electronics run on). Even your power supply is only designed to run on 120 Volts. Anything over that, and POW! It’s toast.

We’ve seen some crazy things that lightning can do, and where is chooses to travel. I’ve personally seen the results — ripping up the ground, punching perfect holes through windows, reaching in the house and touching a computer. In the photo (left), you can see what a direct strike did to a Battery Backup. The Backup, here, died. The data? It was retrievable, as the Hard Drive survived.